A major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and the Grand Palais focuses on the final, revolutionary period of Henri Matisse's career, from 1941 to 1954. The show charts his artistic reinvention following a life-threatening surgery, beginning with obsessive, reworked paintings from his Nice studio during the war and culminating in the radiant, large-scale cut-outs for which he is widely celebrated.
Hyperallergic's newsletter explores the question of whether artworks can possess personhood, drawing on Lisa Siraganian's essay that references the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and Pierre Huyghe's uncanny human statues. Other featured pieces include Ed Simon's review of Elizabeth Goldring's new book on Hans Holbein the Younger, Michael Glover's introduction to George Stubbs's equine portraits at the National Gallery in London, and news of a historic $116M gift to the National Gallery of Art for an artwork lending program. The newsletter also covers Byron Kim's exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, the new V&A East museum in London, and obituaries for Desmond Morris, James Hayward, and Flo Oy Wong.
This week's obituary column honors several significant figures from the art world who recently passed away. The list includes celebrated New Yorker art writer Calvin Tomkins, Houston art patrons Brad and Leslie Bucher, British airbrush artist Philip Castle, master jeweler Thomas Gentille, art historian Charlotte Gere, Alabama sculptor Robert L. "Larry" Godwin, comic artist Sam Kieth, photographer Carol Kitman, and Russian-Italian artist Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna.
Artist Fields Harrington, after witnessing a delivery worker get hit by a car in Brooklyn, began photographing the customized bikes of New York City's delivery workers, capturing their gloves, reflective tape, and cultural markers. His series is now featured in MoMA PS1's "Greater New York" exhibition. In a direct act of reciprocity, Harrington convinced the museum to rent a delivery worker's bike and pay its owner, Gustavo Ajche, his usual wage of $21.44 per hour during museum hours. For one week each month, the bike is displayed, and every 21 minutes and 44 seconds, a notification ding sounds, referencing the wage Ajche and his group Los Deliveristas Unidos fought for.
Komal Shah, a prominent art collector, announced the renaming of her Shah Garg Foundation to the Making Their Mark Foundation, coinciding with a three-day forum in Washington, D.C., scheduled for March 2025. The foundation takes its name from the traveling exhibition "Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection," curated by Cecilia Alemani, which highlights women artists from Shah and her husband Gaurav Garg's collection. The forum, held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, will feature panels, keynotes, and performances organized around themes like Visionary Voices and Changemakers, with Alemani as curatorial director and Loring Randolph as director.
Amsterdam-based artist Cathalijn Wouters has joined the roster of SmithDavidson Gallery. Her practice, which blends painting and drawing through fields of color and linework, is informed by her graphic design training and a pivotal encounter with modern art at the Stedelijk Museum. She describes her process as beginning with drawings and sketches on linen treated like paper, and cites influences ranging from Marcel Proust to Egon Schiele and postwar painting.
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has opened "Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits," the first exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh's portraits of the Roulin family—the local postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine, and their children. The show brings together 14 of Van Gogh's 26 depictions of the family, including loans from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The exhibition was inspired by a 2018 conversation between curators Nienke Bakker and Katie Hanson, who realized no show had ever focused on this working-class family that was so central to Van Gogh's portraiture.
À Paris, des galeristes très mobiles
The Parisian art scene is experiencing a significant wave of gallery expansions and relocations across both the Right and Left Banks. Major developments include Kamel Mennour acquiring the former Malingue gallery space on Avenue Matignon for secondary market masterpieces, and Christophe Person moving from the Marais to a redesigned space on Rue du Bac with the backing of collector Jean Claude Gandur. Other notable moves include London-based Waddington Custot opening a Parisian branch, Singapore's Cuturi Gallery settling in the Palais-Royal, and Vincent Sator inaugurating a new space in the David Chipperfield-designed Morland Mixité Capitale complex.
Artist Liza Lou is presenting a new body of work that merges the legacy of Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes with intricate beadwork. Her solo exhibition, 'FAQ,' at Thaddaeus Ropac in London features mixed-media paintings where thousands of glass beads are meticulously placed atop fields of oil paint, creating textured, chromatic topographies that transform gestural marks into sculptural forms.
“Nature Morte, 1982–1988” at Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles
A new exhibition at Ehrlich Steinberg gallery in Los Angeles presents "Nature Morte, 1982–1988," a focused survey of still-life paintings from a pivotal period in recent art history. The show brings together works from the 1980s by a generation of artists who reinvigorated the traditional genre during a decade defined by explosive art market growth and the rise of Neo-Expressionism.
Christie's, Phillips, and Sotheby's spring marquee auctions in Hong Kong generated a combined $164.9 million, an 18% increase from the equivalent sales in spring 2025. The auctions, strategically timed to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong, saw strong demand for trophy works, with Christie's leading the season at $83.8 million. Key sales included a Gerhard Richter painting for $11.77 million and a Sanyu work for $8.17 million, while Sotheby's sold a Joan Mitchell painting for $17.6 million, the season's top lot.
The art world saw a wave of significant personnel shifts and representation updates this week, highlighted by Travesía Cuatro adding Zimbabwean artist Virginia Chihota to its roster and Esther Schipper announcing representation of Saâdane Afif. Institutional moves include the Baltimore Museum of Art appointing Rhea L. Combs and Ellen McBreen to curatorial fellowships, while Joe Hill was named the new Director and CEO of Yorkshire Sculpture Park ahead of its 50th anniversary.
On the VIP day of Frieze London 2025, Tate acquired three new works by female artists for its collection: Lubna Chowdhary's ceramic and wooden sculpture *Assembly* (2025) from Jhaveri Contemporary, Barbara Walker's drawing *End of Affair II* (2025) from Victoria Miro, and Madge Gill's *Untitled (Venus Mid Heaven)* (1920-30) from the Gallery of Everything at Frieze Masters. The purchases were made through the Frieze Tate Fund, which provides £150,000 in philanthropic support, previously funded by Endeavor and now by Mari, Ariel Emanuel's newly formed company that recently acquired Frieze.
At the VIP day of Frieze London 2025, Tate acquired three new works by female artists for its collection: Lubna Chowdhary's ceramic and wooden sculpture 'Assembly' (2025) from Jhaveri Contemporary, Barbara Walker's drawing 'End of Affair II' (2025) from Victoria Miro, and Madge Gill's 'Untitled (Venus Mid Heaven)' (1920-30) from the Gallery of Everything at Frieze Masters. The purchases were made through the Frieze Tate Fund, which provides £150,000 in philanthropic support, previously funded by Endeavor and now by Mari, Ariel Emanuel's newly formed company that recently acquired Frieze.
The Gochman Family Collection, a significant patron of Indigenous art, has announced plans to open two new exhibition spaces totaling 10,000 square feet in Katonah, New York. Scheduled to debut this fall, the venues will showcase selections from a rapidly growing collection of over 750 works by Native artists from the U.S. and Canada. To lead this expansion, the organization has appointed Laura Phipps, a former associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as its inaugural director.
This edition of State of Play, part of Artnet Pro's The Asia Pivot newsletter, reports on multiple developments across Asia's art scene. Highlights include the launch of Art Fairs Pavilion Taipei, a new alternative art fair co-founded by Hong Kong dealers Willem Molesworth and Ysabelle Cheung, with 13 galleries for its inaugural edition. Galleries Antenna Space and Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery are expanding into Hong Kong and Singapore respectively, while veteran Beijing gallery Long March Space has closed its physical venue. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum announced Taiwan's collateral exhibition at the Venice Biennale, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art named artists for its collateral show. The Asia Society Museum in New York will open a 70th-anniversary exhibition, and the H+ Museum in Suzhou, designed by Tadao Ando, officially opened with two inaugural shows.
Artnet Pro's Talentspotter feature highlights seven Asian artists pushing boundaries in contemporary art through diverse media such as 3D printing, VR, photography, and large-scale installation. The artists include Hà Ninh Pham from Vietnam, who creates speculative topographical works and virtual games, and Heecheon Kim from South Korea, who examines digital cognition and reality using GPS, AR, and VR. The article provides critical and market insights into each artist's practice, background, and recent exhibitions, originally published in the Asia Pivot newsletter.
British artist Anne Hardy presents a suite of floor-based installations and assemblage sculptures titled "Interloper" at Visual. The exhibition features a series of "Beings"—twisted, life-size humanoid entities constructed from rusted wire, crushed cans, soil, and the artist’s own cast body parts and clothing. These figures, often posed in yoga-like positions or meditative stances, appear as hollow, faceless outlines that blend a sense of vitality with physical disintegration.
Artist Nat Faulkner has opened a new exhibition at Camden Art Centre featuring works that explore the physical and chemical foundations of photography. The show includes large-scale photographic pieces like 'Aqua Fortis' and sculptural works such as 'Aperture (Iodine)', which uses iodine solution in skylight panels to bathe the space in amber light, alongside silver-plated 'Analogue' reliefs created through electroplating.
Roland Augustine, cofounder of New York's Luhring Augustine gallery, is stepping down to focus on philanthropy. Cofounder Lawrence Luhring will continue leading the gallery alongside longtime directors Lauren Wittels and Donald Johnson Montenegro, who will become equity partners. Luhring bought out Augustine's share at the end of last year, and the gallery plans to restructure in 2026, potentially changing its name within three years.
British artist Gavin Turk is set to debut a new body of work at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London for his sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, titled "The Escapologist." The exhibition features a series of trompe l’oeil paintings depicting partially open doors set within frames, hung low to create a sculptural, illusionistic effect. Drawing on art historical references ranging from Gerhard Richter’s modernist doors to René Magritte’s surrealist metaphors, the works explore the door as a symbol of the threshold and the psychological tension between anticipation and absence.
Jeff Koons and Stella McCartney have launched a limited-edition capsule collection for Spring 2026. The collection features ready-to-wear items like hoodies, t-shirts, tote bags, and keychains, adorned with prints of Koons's artworks such as "Untitled (Girl with Dolphin and Monkey)" (2006) and sculptures from his "Made in Heaven" series, paired with McCartney's playful slogans like "Slippery When Wet" and "Doggy Style." The release also includes a reimagined pendant based on Koons's iconic "Rabbit" (1986) sculpture.
New York's November 2025 auction season is set to feature at least $1.67 billion in art across Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips, a 54% increase in estimates from the same period last year. The season is dominated by major estates, including Leonard Lauder's $400 million trove at Sotheby's with Klimt paintings and Matisse bronzes, Cindy Pritzker's collection featuring a Van Gogh, and anonymous Surrealist works. Christie's offers $736 million in low estimates from collections like Robert and Patricia Weis, Elaine Wynn, and Stefan Edlis. Phillips remains risk-averse, focusing on established names. The market shows a flight to quality, with emerging art reduced and delegated to day sales, while ultra-contemporary segments contract.
Los Angeles
The Los Angeles art scene is experiencing a significant transformation as major blue-chip galleries like Gagosian and PaceWildenstein expand their presence in the city. This shift is driven by the influx of entertainment industry wealth and a growing interest from Hollywood figures, despite a historically smaller collector base compared to New York. Key institutional developments include Eli Broad's financial interventions to stabilize MOCA and fund new building schemes at LACMA.
The Menil Collection in Houston is showcasing "The Gift of Drawing: Cy Twombly," an exhibition featuring 27 works selected from a massive donation of 121 pieces by the Cy Twombly Foundation. The show spans four decades of the artist's career, from the mid-1950s to 2005, highlighting his experimental approach to collage, painting on handmade paper, and drawing. Many of these works have never been previously exhibited in the United States, filling significant gaps in the museum's already extensive Twombly holdings.
Renowned Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is currently experiencing a significant professional moment with concurrent exhibitions at White Cube in Hong Kong and Seoul, timed to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong. The artist, known for his monumental sculptures crafted from discarded liquor-bottle caps and copper wire, recently saw his 2023 work "G6" sell for $995,000 at Sotheby’s London to benefit the Royal Academy of Arts. Now living back in Ghana after decades teaching in Nigeria, Anatsui continues to explore the fluidity of his medium, which mimics the organic processes of growth and decay.
L.A. Art Week 2026 is anchored by the return of Frieze Los Angeles at the Santa Monica Airport, featuring approximately 100 international galleries and the curated Frieze Projects. The week serves as a precursor to a landmark season for the city, which includes the upcoming opening of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries and the debut of Lauren Halsey’s major sculpture park in South Central. Satellite fairs like Felix Art Fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the artist-centric Post-Fair continue to expand the week's geographical and conceptual footprint.
PaperCity tapped Elaine de Kooning House founder Chris Byrne to curate a list of the 14 best art museum exhibitions worldwide in 2026. Highlights include a major Marcel Duchamp retrospective at MoMA—the first North American survey in over 50 years—featuring nearly 300 works, and Raphael's first comprehensive U.S. exhibition at The Met, titled 'Raphael: Sublime Poetry,' with 200 drawings, paintings, and tapestries. Other notable shows include 'The Shakers: A World in the Making' at ICA Philadelphia and a Guerrilla Girls exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
The article argues that contemporary painting has entered a period of stagnation, characterized by bloated, vapid, and market-driven works. The author cites observations from Frieze London and the exhibition "Painting After Painting" at SMAK in Ghent, noting that much recent painting lacks intellectual rigor and emotional depth. A conversation with artist Christopher Wool is referenced, where he contrasts the current lack of critical dialogue with the productive crises of the late 1970s, when painters like Philip Guston faced backlash for challenging conventions.
Fall 2025 brings a wave of major monographic museum exhibitions worldwide, featuring artists such as Allan Rohan Crite, Wifredo Lam, Suzanne Jackson, Woody De Othello, and Theaster Gates. Highlights include the first mainstream museum shows for Crite in his hometown of Boston, the first solo museum exhibition for Gates in Chicago, and the first U.S. retrospective for Lam at MoMA. Other notable shows include surveys of Robert Colescott, Coco Fusco, Richard Hunt, Jacob Lawrence, and Cauleen Smith, spanning institutions from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.